Author's Notes: Thanks to tx_tart and secret_garden for the wonderful betas!

The Third Night

"I spy something...maroon."

"The lipstick worn by the model on the Versace billboard."

"You suck. Your turn."

"I spy...something gray."

"Gray? Gray, Fraser!? Every goddamned thing around us is gray. It's two in the friggin morning!"

Fraser sighed. "Right you are, Ray. Your turn."

"Oh," Ray said. Well, hell. "This sucks."




~

The Fourth Night

"Union."

"US Steel."

"Metal."

"Pedal."

"Flower."

"Girlie."

"Woman."

"Stella."

"Ahem...dating."

"Hopeless."

"Ray, surely you don't--"

"We've both got lousy luck with women, Frase. Unlike goddamned Cavelli up there..." Ray pounded the steering wheel and collapsed back into his slouch. "Why the fuck are we here, anyway? What kind of guy walks out on a girl like that in the middle of the night? It's after three. He ain't going nowhere."

"I daresay you're right."

"Why would he leave that? She's smart and nice and classy and almost as squeaky clean as you are. Plus, she's a babe. I don't care what Dewey says, no way does she know what he's up to."

"We'll know for certain soon enough, Ray."

"Lucky fucker. Curled up in bed, not a care in the world, while we sit here and stare at dark windows all night."

"Even still, it's up to us to confirm that until our shift is up."

"This sucks."




~

The Fifth Night

"Truth or Dare."

"What?" Fraser snapped out of his doze, half-startled.

"Truth or Dare, Frase. Come on, help me stay awake here. Forty-seven minutes 'til the Duck Boys show. Unless they're late."

"I've never played."

"What, you didn't have games when you were a kid?"

"Of course we did, Ray. I didn't say I was unfamiliar, only that I never participated in playing Truth or Dare."

"Yeah, and? Explain that." Ray gave him a look like he was interested, or at least interested in something to keep them awake a little longer.

"I'm sure you had sleepovers as a boy. When we lived in Inuvik, I sometimes spent the night at Innusiq or Mark's house."

"You never participated? What, you just watched?"

"I...perhaps I misspoke. Sometimes we played a variation that you might call Dare or Double-Dare."

"Yeah, we usually skipped the Truth part, too. What kind of dares did you take?"

"Foolish ones," Fraser said around a yawn. "Climbing ice-laden trees. Jumping off the roof into the snow. Swimming across the Mackenzie River. That sort of thing." Fraser shrugged. His voice had gone kind of quiet.

"Sounds fun," Ray said. "We mostly just dared each other to steal crap or climb fire-escapes." Ray shut his mouth. He wasn't about to mention the circle-jerks and size contests. "But...that sort of sounds like you were participating, you know?"

"In Dare or Double-Dare, yes."

Hunh. "Yeah, okay."

Just then, a tan Oldsmobile turned into the street, drove down the block, made a U-turn, and started creeping up behind them. Ray watched for a couple of minutes, staring into the glare of headlights, until he saw a woman get out in front of an apartment building and realized it was just the morning Trib. "Paper route," he said, even though Fraser probably already knew. Fraser made a noncommittal noise. His eyes were fixed on the building ahead and to the left, the one with their suspect and his girlfriend.

"Light in the bathroom."

Fraser nodded. "The silhouette was male."

"Now does he go back to bed or get up for the day?"

They watched in silence. A shower and shave would take a little while. A quick leak would take no time. The light stayed on.




~

Huey and Dewey arrived just in time to see Cavelli pull out into the street in his new silver Porsche. There was no way they were going to be able to pursue in Dewey's ancient hatchback, so Ray gunned the GTO and cursed Dewey for not checking a real car out of the motor pool the night before.

Turned out Cavelli was just going to the gym, god knows why at that hour, but it left Ray and Fraser some more time to sit and stay awake while they waited for Huey and Dewey to go grab themselves a nice generic Chevy and get back.

"Truth or Dare," Ray said, and winked at Fraser.

Fraser laughed. "We don't have much room in here for dares, Ray."

"Sure we do. Pick one."

"All right, then. Dare."

"Keep an eye on the gym. I gotta think of something." Fraser made a face, but Ray just gave him a long look. What could he dare the Mountie to do? He was in flannel and jeans for the stakeout, so he couldn't make him do something embarrassing to the uniform. They weren't twelve-year-old kids, either, which changed things. And it wasn't like when Ray was in college playing stupid drinking games, either, which really changed things. "This is hard. You jump off buildings, you jump out of moving vehicles, you jump onto moving vehicles--when they're on fire, even." Ray glared at him. "This sucks. I can't think of anything you wouldn't already do."

"I couldn't do much of that inside the car anyway, Ray." And Fraser's voice was doing a funny thing, low and rough, and there was something in it that made Ray wonder if Dare and Double-Dare had included something like size contests after all.

Ray was trying to think of something to say in reply when the unmarked car pulled into the spot to their right and Dewey waved them off.




~

The sixth night was worse. Cavelli and his girlfriend had dinner, watched TV, and went to bed. It was so bad that he actually asked Fraser to tell him an Inuit story. A good one, with lots of action and maybe some blood and gore. Fraser laughed at him, and then he did so. It was about whales, whaling, whale guts, killer whales, sinking ships, and icebergs. After it was over, Ray looked up at Fraser sharply and said, "Hey, that one didn't have any Inuit in it."

Fraser snickered. "Right you are, Ray."

"But I actually asked for an Inuit story."

"That you did."

Ray blinked and started laughing. Fraser was fucking with him. He'd almost forgotten he did that sometimes, when he was feeling good, relaxed, and maybe bored out of his thick-headed skull. "What now?"

Fraser had a gleam in his eye. "Truth or Dare?"

Ray laughed again. "Sure. But we got the same trouble now as last night, Frase."

"Perhaps. Still, I'm sure we could find a creative solution if we put our minds to it."

That sounded really dirty, but Ray wasn't going to say anything. The only dares he could think of were all along the lines of I dare you to take your dick out and show me how you touch yourself. I dare you to suck me off. I dare you to kiss me. And that was not gonna happen. Not gonna happen at all, no matter how good their duet felt sometimes. No matter how much Fraser crept into his fantasy-life.

"Well?"

"Huh?"

"Truth or Dare, Ray. Pick one."

Oh shit. "Dare."

"All right, I dare you to obey all traffic laws on the way home this morning."

"Oh, god, that's so lame!" Ray yelled. "Fraser, give me a dare I can do right now, right here, while we watch this guy sleep."

Fraser cocked his head. "All right, then. Tell me what your last sexual encounter was like."

"What?" Ray stared, but Fraser just waited. He was blushing a little, but his eyes were doing that defiant thing, daring him to chicken out. After a moment, Ray said, "That sounds like a Truth, Fraser."

Fraser sat back with a wry smile. "I can't think of anything to dare you that wouldn't be completely inappropriate or entirely juvenile."

Ray grinned. "Gotcha."

"Indeed."

"So, you wanna play Truth or Truth?"

"Not if it makes you uncomfortable, Ray."

Uh-huh. That was a deflection if he'd ever heard one. On the other hand, it occurred to Ray that maybe for Fraser, Truth or Truth was a bigger dare than Dare or Double-dare would be. He didn't open up, not unless his life depended on it...and even then. "All right, truth. Last time I got laid," he said.

He settled back in his seat, eyes on the darkened apartment windows across the way, and didn't look at Fraser. "You mean last sexual encounter with another person, right?"

"Yes, Ray."

Fraser's voice was soft. Too soft. It made him want to do something stupid, and before he could shut his mouth, he was doing it. "Guy or girl?"

Fraser made a choked noise, but covered fast, saying, "Whichever was most recent."

Ray smirked. "Been a while, regardless. Stella was most recent, but it got interrupted by a certain red-suited Canadian before things really got good. No biggie, though," he said, before Fraser could start. "It was dumb to drag out the end like that. It's no good for either of us."

"It did seem rather...unfair."

"I guess," Ray said, not sure which of them Fraser was referring to, but not willing to ask. "Truth or Truth," he said, "your turn."

"Truth, then."

Ray decided shooting the same question back at him would kind of suck, since he knew Fraser hadn't gotten any since the bitch who nearly got him killed, so he took it in the opposite direction. "Okay, when'd you lose your virginity?"

"Ray!"

"Hey, you asked a sex question, now it's my turn."

"Uh..."

"No stalling."

"Well, define 'virginity', Ray. Do you mean specifically intercourse?"

Ray shrugged. "First time whatever it was you were doing felt like real sex."

"Oh." After a long pause, Fraser added, "I was fifteen, I suppose."

"What, you suppose?" Ray prodded when Fraser didn't continue. "Tell me the story already!"

"Ray, it's--"

"It's late, I'm tired, and you have to keep me awake. Tell me the story."

Fraser cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and then cleared his throat a couple of more times before he started talking. "The first time it felt like real sex. It was terribly awkward, of course, but I guess that's a given at that age. Innusiq had found an issue of Hustler laying in the top of a garbage bin in town. He stole it and showed it to me. We were very close, you see, Ray..."

"I had buddies like that too. Kids you grow up with. I mean, Stella wasn't around for everything."

"We read it cover to cover, such as the reading was, at least, and the pictures of oral sex were...we'd never seen photographs like that before. Naked women, certainly, but..."

"Nothing hardcore."

"Right."

"So you wondered what it felt like?"

"That's what he said exactly, and we agreed to try it." Fraser paused for a moment and then laughed. "It's all we did that summer. We would go hiking in the forest until we were sure no one would find us, and then..."

"Only the summer?"

"In the fall, a girl named Eloise started school with us. He became quite taken with her."

"That sucks."

"It was a good summer, at least."

Ray was about to ask, You ever miss having friends like that, that you can touch? when headlights appeared and pulled to the curb behind them. This time Huey was driving. Ray let them know the place was dead and left them to it.




~

"Sorry if I was prying," Ray said three streets away. He was obeying the speed limit. He'd even waited for a light to turn green when there was no traffic as far as he could see.

Fraser answered him in a quiet voice. "You weren't, Ray. Besides which, I started it, so there's nothing at all to apologize for."

"You still wanna crash on my couch, so they don't take your day of rest away?"

"As Turnbull still has Dief, that would be most welcome."

Ray nodded. After a minute, he added, "I didn't mean to bring you down."

"It's quite all right, Ray. I'm fine. Just thinking about old times."




~

It only took him a minute to make up the couch. They did this a lot, after all. Still, Ray was feeling guilty and hovered too much until Fraser gave him a look like he was unhinged. Finally, he brushed his teeth and went to bed, where he lay kicking himself and trying to convince himself he wasn't wigging out over how they'd both just kind of come out to each other, if that's even what you called it in a case like this. Kids did stupid shit, after all, especially at that age. It didn't mean anything in the long run, except when it did, and while maybe it did for Ray, since sometimes, not always, but sometimes it was a guy instead of a girl who made him turn his head or turned his crank, but it wasn't like either of them were gonna be marching in any parades anytime soon, or ever.

On the other hand, Fraser was the one who'd brought sex into it. He didn't know what the hell was up with that. Probably they were just both worn out from this hellish stakeout and not thinking clearly. Or maybe Fraser was trying to surprise him. Fucking with him, like he did sometimes. And Ray didn't mind, usually. It was cool to see Fraser exhibit an actual sense of humor, even if he did get his chain yanked. Except this time it hadn't really been all that funny.




~

The Seventh Night

They got Cavelli at the big meeting at Angelino's, red-handed, as he pushed and pushed and finally lost his temper and vocalized a threat against the union head. It was going to be a helluva mess for the State's Attorney, but between surveillance and what the warrants had turned up, they'd got him. Conspiracy, extortion, bribing customs officials, smuggling, plus he was in a whole heap of trouble with the longshoremen's union and half a dozen shipping companies, too.

Ray finished the paperwork, wondering idly if the girlfriend would stick around or if she would hightail it. Ray knew she could do better than this creep, not that he had any personal interest at stake. It was just that he'd spent a lot of time staring up at her apartment windows that week and felt sort of like he knew her, kind of. He was curious what she'd do, if she'd stick by Cavelli's side or throw him over for being a lying sack of shit.

At the station, Fraser had spent a lot of time looking at her, with her big, angry-hurt eyes and long, wavy hair, and Ray knew exactly what he must be thinking about.

"You okay?" he nudged Fraser on his way back from dumping his files in Frannie's inbox.

"Yes, quite."

"I'm done here. Home?"

"Please."




~

Ray pulled up in front of his apartment and Fraser looked up, surprised. "Oh...I didn't realize."

"You were pretty lost in thought there. Come on."

"There's no need for me to stay over tonight, Ray."

"Tomorrow's Saturday, sleep in. Come on." Ray was out of the car, headed for his building. Fraser could either insist or follow, and why would he insist on sleeping in his office if didn't have to?

Upstairs, he opened a beer for himself and gave Fraser a glass of water. "What gives?" he asked, settling on the couch beside him.

"I'm not sure what you mean, Ray."

"Truth or Truth."

"Ray."

"It's not going to kill you, you know." Fraser gave him a sharp look. "What?" Ray scowled back at him. "Truth, Fraser. You're thinking about the girlfriend, aren't you?"

"How did you know that?"

"Because I have been, too. Thinking how I'd feel if I found out the person I was sleeping with was into that kind of crap. She swore she thought he was legit, and we'll see whether she's telling the truth or not, but if she is...man, that would suck."

"Yes." It was a whisper.

Ray waited a minute, hoping he wouldn't have to be an ass about it, but Fraser didn't say anything else. Finally he gave him a look and said, "Tell me?" Fraser didn't respond, except to glare down at his glass of water on the table, so Ray took a breath and repeated, "Tell me about Victoria."

Fraser shook his head.

"Please? You know I read the file. Welsh told me she really fucked you up."

"Ray, no."

"Fraser. Truth or Truth."

"No."

"Okay, let me ask you this. When was the last time you let someone give you a hug? And I don't mean Frannie throwing herself at you."

Fraser met his eyes, annoyed. "Two Sundays ago. It was Mrs. Vecchio, and it took place at the end of the evening after the family dinner. Is that sufficient for you?"

"No." Ray reached out and pulled Fraser toward him. "Let me do this. I want to."

Fraser didn't budge. "I don't need your pity, Ray."

Ray's eyes flashed. They'd done this, mostly with Ray the one having the pity-party, but still. They'd done this. "What, so I'm not allowed to be your friend, is that it? Jesus, Fraser, you had a shitty thing happen to you a long time ago, and we've had a weird, stressful week, or didn't you notice?"

"I noticed," Fraser snapped.

Damn it. Stubborn fucking Mountie. "Truth or Dare, then."

"This isn't a game, Ray!"

Ray set his jaw. "I want to see the scar."

"What?"

"Show me where he shot you," Ray growled.

Fraser stood up, eyes dark with anger. He was tense like he was trying to decide whether to walk out.

"Please?"

"Why?" Fraser was half-pissed, half desperate, and Ray hated himself, but he had to do this. There was no backing away from it now.

Ray picked up his beer and took a long pull while he tried to put his words in order. "Because you know all about Stella and how when she left, it was like I was dead inside. You saw what it did to me. And I want to know...I want to know what the hole in my partner's back looks like."

Fraser looked stricken and a little nauseous. The anger was fading, though, and something like resignation was slowly creeping into his expression. Ray watched, not saying anything, and after a minute, Fraser took a deep breath and said, "Very well."

Then he turned around and stripped off his henley and undershirt.

"Jesus." It was a little above his waist, a little less than an inch to the left of his spine. Fucking Vecchio had nearly paralyzed him. "Jesus, I could throttle them both."

"Both?" Fraser's voice was a little muffled.

Ray was on his feet, too, moving closer. The scar tissue made a deep, pink divot, with the long line of a surgical scar leading up and down from the center. "Vecchio for his shitty aim. He nearly killed you. He nearly put you in a chair for life. And her for being an evil murdering bitch from hell to begin with."

Fraser laughed, sort of, except for how it sounded like shaking a bag of broken glass. Ray's hand went instinctively to his shoulder, not thinking about the warm, bare skin until his hand closed on it and Fraser's breath choked off in his throat.

Fraser was turning to face him, too much written on his face and no words coming out, and Ray did what felt right, which was to step in and put his arms around him.

Fraser shuddered and fought for breath, fought for control. Ray just held on. When Fraser finally came back to himself, Ray was saying, "That's it, that's it. You're safe, okay? You're safe here. I've gotcha, you're safe here."

Fraser's shaking had stopped, so Ray pulled back enough to see his face. He still looked pretty shell-shocked, but he was hearing Ray, nodding.

"No words yet?

After a deep breath, Fraser opened his mouth, shut it, and shook his head.

"It's okay. Come here." Ray led the way back to the couch, sat down at one end, and ordered Fraser to sprawl out beside him and do nothing more than lie there. For once, Fraser obeyed.

Fraser was lying on his side, his head in Ray's lap, and with his left hand, Ray was making long sweeps over Fraser's shoulders and back. His right hand was soothing the muscles at the back of Fraser's neck. Ray hadn't done this for anyone since Stella, but it was better like this anyway because this was here, now, not trying to get back something that was cold and dead and decades old. This was the present.

In his mind, a loud voice was warning him, Do not fuck up this partnership, Kowalski, but there wasn't much he could do about it now. Besides, it felt right. Fraser needed it, and Fraser had let him, had trusted him enough to let him see. To let him inside to the dark spot he kept everyone else out of. Fucking Vecchio. Fucking Victoria. Fucking scar. Fucking bullet still inside it.




~

A little while later, Fraser rolled onto his back and looked up at Ray. Ray pulled his hands away, giving Fraser a little room, but Fraser caught his left hand in his own and pressed it over his sternum. The skin was smooth, firm, and Ray could feel Fraser's heart thudding against his palm.

"Thank you," Fraser murmured, eyes falling shut. "This feels good."

"No problem."

A little later, Fraser opened his eyes, a slight frown wrinkling his brow. "What you said about Stella leaving, Ray--that you felt dead inside. Do you still feel that way?"

"Nah, not anymore. It just took me a while to see that there's way more to life than just her, you know?"

Fraser nodded thoughtfully and shifted his feet on the arm of the couch. After a long moment, he looked back up at Ray and stroked his thumb over the back of his hand, where he was still pressing it to his chest. "I wonder, that is, if you don't mind terribly much..."

Ray grinned down at him and squeezed his fingers. "Is this like a dare?"

Fraser gave him a dark little smile and squeezed back. "Touch me?"

"You sure?" Ray said, because probably, they really should talk before things went any further, but Fraser was pulling Ray's hand in a slow, heavy line down his chest. "I don't want to fuck anything up here."

"You won't," Fraser said. "We won't. Come down here and touch me," and his mouth was open and a low sound was rumbling out of his chest, and Ray was moving as Fraser pulled him, twisting around and over, falling forward into Fraser's warm, solid bulk.

Ray held his face inches above Fraser's and gazed down. Fraser's hands were on his back, stroking lower, shifting his hips, then rubbing back up toward his neck. Ray could feel how much Fraser wanted this, needed this, and not just by what was pressing up against the front of his pants. It was in Fraser's eyes. This was bigger than sex, bigger than partnership, even. It was...

"Truth," Fraser whispered, and Ray bent to taste it.